CONSERVATIVE leader David Cameron is visiting Manchester to say better role models and welfare reform are as important to tackling gun crime by young people than a legal crackdown.

As Tony Blair hosts a summit at Number 10 in the wake of a spate of fatal shootings in the city, Mr Cameron will criticise Labour's "top-down approach".

Visiting a Wythenshawe community project run by former bouncers, he will endorse calls for marriage-friendly benefit changes and help for jailed fathers stay in touch with their children.

And his fresh demands for a deep-seated cultural change come as he says he wants to see fathers who walk out on their children as socially unacceptable as drink drivers.

A series of shootings have left several young males dead heightened fears that gun crime on the streets of Manchester is spiralling out of control.

Sentences

The Prime Minister, who has set out plans for tougher sentences for gun-toting teenage gang members, called the summit to discuss the situation with the police, community leaders and experts.

But Mr Cameron - who said the shootings showed society was "badly broken" - will say: "Tony Blair is announcing a new crackdown on guns; I'm here in Wythenshawe with a different message.

"Of course we need tough penalties for carrying guns. But that's not enough. We need to get to the roots of crime - and that means families and communities.

"Instead of Labour's top-down approach which sees the criminal law as the only means of cutting crime, Conservatives believe in social responsibility - a bottom-up approach which cuts crime by building stronger families and communities."